Saturday, April 27, 2019

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday April 27

                                                   by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

THE WEEKLY BRIEF

COMPOUND INTELLIGENCE MISDIRECTION: 
The same officials who missed the role of Saudis in 9-11-2001 fabricated
the role of Russians in the 2016 election   





The American intelligence services for two decades were misled by American political correctness and Saudi Arabian officials about the Islamic roots of the Salafist Sunni movement which was the mother's milk for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That Sunni movement today remains the ideological font of worldwide terror (including ISIS, Boko Haram and al Shabaab). It is based in Mecca and Medina promulgated by Wahhabi clerics and protected  by the guardians of the holy places - the Saudi royal clan. Inside Saudi Arabia, none of these groups are tolerated because military leadership stays in the hands of the Saudis. Ideologically they are bedmates but they will kill each other over who should lead the jihad. Think Stalin, Trotsky, and Communism.

When Donald Trump ran for President, many of the same American officials who missed the ideological home base of Islamic terror were misled by anti-Russian British intelligence officials about Donald Trump. These ambitious American careerists were religious illiterates. They shared the coastal elite's animus toward Trump. Once again they were manipulated by stronger men of different countries with clear views of their own countries' strategic interests. Both the prolonged Russian investigation and the Mueller era FBI non-investigation of Saudis and 9/11 came from agency careerists trying to win favor in the Washington DC baby boomer culture. That culture is enveloped by careerist power couples and blind to religion, male groups, and nations as the driving agents of history.

The Mueller Report, while unable to prove any active coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian government, showed they both had interests in defeating Hillary Clinton. She was the favored candidate of the military and security establishments of the Anglo-American alliance. That wasn't because she was a great leader but because she was utterly predictable and malleable by the bureaucrats. There is no discussion in the Report of the foreign manipulation by British and Australian agents. They expertly "recruited" the shared hatred for Donald Trump by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The British as geopolitical actors were understandably against any new strategic alliance between the US and Russia. That would benefit the US but greatly diminish British importance in the asymmetrical Anglo alliance. Christopher Steele got paid but his motivation preceded requests for opposition research. Christopher Steele is in the best James Bond tradition of British intelligence.  He will take whatever pleasures and personal benefits come his way but in the end he wants to serve his country and hurt her enemies. He despises Russia and considered Donald Trump a foolish immature American who didn't understand the adult world of international alliances. The American politicians and intelligence officers he manipulated were no match for a man toughened as head of the Russian desk for M16 in London. The Russian dossier is a foreigner's disinformation campaign which had plenty of willing American megaphones. There is nothing so easily manipulated by foreigners as the small mindedness of party and government careerists - it's a bipartisan coastal elite character fault.

The Mueller report has laid out a case for impeaching the President for obstruction of justice. Mueller clearly explained he didn't indict Trump because of a Justice Department legal opinion that the way to charge a President is by articles of impeachment not indictments. He did say in a footnote that Trump could be indicted when out of office. The rebellion against the elected President continues. Mr. Mueller has never been a neutral. He has put forth the case and now the House is called on to impeach. The fact that many of us think the case is not only weak but ludicrous does not mean Mueller has not deliberately put forth an impeachment brief. The impeachment temptation may be irresistible for the Trump-haters. Even knowing the Senate would not remove him from office, the House Democrats could say the House patriots impeached but the Senate partisans covered up.

We need serious opposition to President Trump from the Congress about a foreign ally but it certainly isn't Russia. The disastrous foreign policy of the US allying with the Saudi perpetrators of 9/11 continues under President Trump. An alliance of Christian nations with Russia that could have taught Trump about the Salafists and reconfigured post Cold war international relations was sidelined by the prolonged Mueller investigation. Score one for the Brits. Add a cheer from the Saudis and Israelis. The Americans and international order are the losers. The small-mindedness of Trump's enemies in our own government and the brazenness of foreign leaders and operatives taking advantage of this situation present a stunning contrast. There are many powerful characters in this drama representing foreign national and "western-globalist" interests which are harmful to Christianity, the American nation, and our American President. Trump is more clear-sighted than the Bush brothers but he is blinded by his own inordinate hostility toward Iran and Barack Obama. He is missing the Saudi trickery partly because the Saudi hatred of Shiites dovetails with Israel's Netanyahu policy of demonizing Iran and fearing Hezbollah. There are very few American nationalists in either political party or the news media who can help sort out this confusion. It was one of the most substantial accomplishments of President Obama and his Iranian foreign policy team that he resisted "the blob" and made an opening to Iran. This was as significant as the Nixon Kissinger opening to China that was so crucial in the Cold War. But Obama's initiative has been swallowed by a bitter Republican partisanship and a blatant Israeli intervention. There are almost no American Christian thinkers who have enough of a geopolitical map in their heads to help sort this out and explain that the Shiites are our natural religious allies in this religious war.

Still we can take heart that things are much clearer today than before the Trump presidency. Robert Mueller will not do well in the light. Myopia and misdirection are the defining characteristics of Mueller's career in the FBI. Maybe it is some cosmic Karma that the FBI chief's stunning lack of interest in the Saudis after 9/11 was balanced by the Special Counsel's dragged out investigations of Russians after the Trump election. Mueller's inattention to the Saudis as FBI head in the decade after 9/11 is like Comey's whitewash of  Hillary Clinton for obstructing justice. The contrasts with how they treated President Trump make the ugly truth even more clear.

We are in a much better situation than the first years of the Trump Presidency. His calls were being leaked daily while his policies were resisted at every turn and level of the government. He was seriously thought of as a traitor. Those impugning his loyalty did so in the name of professionalism and "higher loyalties". Their own malfeasance was covered by the secrecy of the investigation.

May the light of this Easter season help us as Christians and American nationalists see clearly our natural allies - the Orthodox nations (esp. Russia), the Shia Muslim nations (starting with Iraq) and the Chinese and Hindu nationalists beset by Salafist Sunnis. We treat too many religious Muslim brothers as enemies. We treat our real Muslim enemies (who are much fewer) as friends.

President Trump has inherited a great intelligence and foreign policy failure that is much bigger than the Russia hoax. In the President's exuberance he is now driving even faster down a misguided path that the bipartisan foreign policy establishment initiated before he was elected. We owe him our loyalty and thanks and cooperation in securing our border and building our infrastructure. We also owe him our loyal opposition against collusion with Saudi Arabia. When he first announced for office he said we have to figure out "where the hell the hate is coming from." That question has not yet been answered. He is right it has something to do with Islam. He is misdirected that it is centered in Shiite Iran.

The two major sources of Salafist Sunni terror are 1) the ISIS caliphate of al Baghdadi which is now occult (thanks to Iran, Iraq and President Trump) and 2) the Wahhabi Saudi guardians of Mecca and Medina who operate in the wide open with our blessing. Our alliance with the Saudis betrays the 9/11 victims and shames our flag. We also must not forget the thousands of American men killed in Iraq after Salafist Sunnis funded largely by Saudi affiliates refused to allow a Shia majority government rule peacefully in ancient Babylon. The American removal of Saddam Hussein became the tragedy of Iraq when our major Arab ally undercut the establishment of an elected Shiite government. May we unveil the masks of the Evil One who slays Muslims at prayer in New Zealand, Christians at worship in Sri Lanka,  Shiite children at play in Yemen and Shiite men in protest in Saudi Arabia. None of this is our Father's work.     



I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH


THE LAITY AS AN ORDERThere is an important idea hereIs laicizing priests an insult?

FRANCISCAN UNIVERSITY AND SCANDAL: Like almost all male religious orders the Franciscans are full of rot - this is just beginning.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH CATHOLIC JOURNALISMThe editor of Crisis uses the death of Fr James Schall (RIP) to blast Pope Francis  Fr. Schall taught my son at Georgetown. He told him he was more Roman than Greek and we Minnesotans took that as a compliment. I thought Fr. Schall was more a Greek than Roman. He stayed at our home and a group of men I recruited went on a long trip with him. He was utterly enjoyable and instructive. To this day I remember two corrections he made about my political thinking and personality which were devastatingly accurate. Like almost all "conservative Catholic intellectuals" he missed the meaning of Donald Trump. He thought at first he was the favorite of the liberal cable news people because they thought he was the only Republican Hillary Clinton could beat. Quite the contrary he was the only man who could beat her and the media. Fr. Schall always struck me as much more a man of philosophy than prayer, of speech than action. But face to face, he bore the truth to both my son and me. He once wrote on my son's paper, "too much Pence, too little Plato." He was a phenomenal teacher. May his great soul rest in peace.

Apparently the only expert on Islam at Catholic blogspots Crisis and Catholic Thing is William Kilpatrick. We critically reviewed his very good book on Islam, Christianity and Atheism: Fighting for the Soul of the West. In his most recent Easter week contribution, he concludes from the bombing at Sri Lanka that all Muslims will cheer the killers as martyrs because of the conversion and jihad mandate in Islam. This is utterly irresponsible on his part but he is safe where he writes.
 Two groups have made our fight against the jihadists so incoherent. Those who say Islam has nothing to do with the fight and those who say Islam is metaphysically our enemy. As Kilpatrick says it is precisely the good Muslims who take God seriously who are our enemies.  Kilpatrick like Robert  Spencer at Jihad Watch and the deceased James Schall and the still breathing Cardinal Burke are all in the Islam is the Enemy camp. Their preening intellectual purity puts Christians around the world at great risk. They are right that the pursuit of the "moderate Muslim" is really a search for apostates who have become Western secularists but still carry their Muslim names from their parents. There are a lot of them in the Democratic Party endorsing abortion and sodomy while decrying Islamophobia. But that is not the whole of the debate and religious men should understand the claims of other religious traditions. The great majority of Muslims do not believe that killing Christians at prayer is doing God's Will. And because they are Muslims, the question before the house must be: what is God's Will? The secularists tell us no-one knows so ask that question in the privacy of your own house. Be realists think national interests or be globalists and spread democracy and individual rights. Religious men say we must build our national communities and international relations on our honest attempts to discern God's Will and obey Him. (Our response to the New Zealand bombing of Muslims.)

CARDINAL SARA: A BISHOP'S WARNINGAn interview in preview of his new book. Excerpts:

The spiritual crisis involves the entire world. But its source is in Europe. People in the West are guilty of rejecting God. They have not only rejected God. Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be considered the spokesman of the West, has claimed: “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him…” We have murdered God. In view of God’s death among men, Nietzsche would replace him with a prophetic “Superman.”

The spiritual collapse thus has a very Western character. In particular, I would like to emphasize the rejection of fatherhood. Our contemporaries are convinced that, in order to be free, one must not depend on anybody. There is a tragic error in this. Western people are convinced that receiving is contrary to the dignity of human persons. But civilized man is fundamentally an heir, he receives a history, a culture, a language, a name, a family. This is what distinguishes him from the barbarian. To refuse to be inscribed within a network of dependence, heritage, and filiation condemns us to go back naked into the jungle of a competitive economy left to its own devices. Because he refuses to acknowledge himself as an heir, man is condemned to the hell of liberal globalization in which individual interests confront one another without any law to govern them besides profit at any price.
In this book, however, I want to suggest to Western people that the real cause of this refusal to claim their inheritance and this refusal of fatherhood is the rejection of God. From Him we receive our nature as man and woman. This is intolerable to modern minds. Gender ideology is a Luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God. Thus some rebel against God and pointlessly mutilate themselves in order to change their sex. But in reality they do not fundamentally change anything of their structure as man or woman. The West refuses to receive, and will accept only what it constructs for itself. Transhumanism is the ultimate avatar of this movement. Because it is a gift from God, human nature itself becomes unbearable for western man.

This revolt is spiritual at root. It is the revolt of Satan against the gift of grace. Fundamentally, I believe that Western man refuses to be saved by God’s mercy. He refuses to receive salvation, wanting to build it for himself. The “fundamental values” promoted by the UN are based on a rejection of God that I compare with the rich young man in the Gospel. God has looked upon the West and has loved it because it has done wonderful things. He invited it to go further, but the West turned back. It preferred the kind of riches that it owed only to itself.

Africa and Asia are not yet entirely contaminated by gender ideology, transhumanism, or the hatred of fatherhood. But the Western powers’ neo-colonialist spirit and will to dominate pressures countries to adopt these deadly ideologies.

THE OLD WOOD BURNT AWAY, THE EUCHARIST WAS SHELTERED, THE STONE ALTAR AND GOLDEN CROSS REMAINED, THE PEOPLE PRAYED AND SANG AVE MARIA:



NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL IN PARIS, FRANCE, MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK 2019


II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND THE TRUMP COLLUSION CHARGESThey admit they were stirring the waters in 2015 in this Guardian article from 2017. Nations are actors in politics. That shouldn't be a news flash. The British intelligence establishment like the Big Three agency heads in the US didn't want Donald Trump elected. The US chiefs had visceral deep domestic reasons to dislike Trump. The Brits were against his new ideas about foreign policy and Russia.

BERNIE SANDERSThe anti-Saudi candidate.



III. THE NATIONS


SRI LANKASalafist Sunnis kill over 300 Catholics at worship. Some blame "terrorists not a religion." Others blame Islam as a religion of terror. US incoherence continues in our inability to see world terror is overwhelmingly a Salafist Sunni project instigated by the Salafist Sunnis allowed to be the protectors of the Holy Sites - the real position of religious authority in Islam.

SPAINWill a nationalist win there April 28?

ISLAMIC GOALS IN PALESTINE DON'T INCLUDE TWO STATES: The founder of Islamic Jihad in Palestine was Fathi Shaqaqi. He was assassinated in Malta. His story is well told by Al Jazeera.

NATIONS OF SOUTH AMERICAFrom Unasur to Prosur.

INDONESIA: A fresh face nationalist reformer and a top Muslim cleric prove an unbeatable coalition. The biggest Muslim country (by number for Muslims) is structuring its national life more clearly as Islamic.

EL SALVADORGets a populist.

BLAME IRANCatholic Knights of Columbus CEO joins the anti-Iran chorus criticizing Iraq's choice of allies. Carl Anderson in the Wall Street Journal says even though ISIS has been removed, Iranian militias are preventing Christians from returning to traditional Christian towns in Iraq.

PAKISTAN AND IRAN - THE TWO NEW NEIGHBORS OF AFGHANISTANA remarkable new development.

SAUDI ARABIA - SAUDIS EXECUTE SHIITES33 of 37 are Shiites - Does the anti Shiite violence of Saudi Arabia count as terrorism or anti-terrorism? Jamal Khashoggi and the JewsNuclear technology to the Saudis?

WHAT THREE STATES PLAY THE LARGEST ROLE IN INFLUENCING UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: The British, the Saudis, and the Israelis. The Russians aren't close. None of these three allies want the US to have a close alliance with the other world nuclear power. Remember that old foreign policy dictum: "No one hates a new best friend more than an old best friend." 




IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

BURNING CHRISTIAN CHURCHESSatan and Racism.

THE SACRED IN A PROFANE WORLDA discussion between Roger Scruton and Hamza Yusuf. On images and selfies and "the given things" in nature. Islam and Christianity in deep agreement.

CHINA AND HER MUSLIMSCultural education en masse.

AUSTRALIA - RUGBY STAR LOSES MILLIONS AND IS OSTRACIZEDHe condemns eight traditional sins - but one has a lobby so he is out. There are a lot of adulterers and alcoholics in the league - but respecting them is not league policy. Israel Folau takes one for the Lord.

KATE SMITH IN A BURQA OVER A SONG  PAUL ROBESON SANG BEST:

Statue of Kate Smith Covered on Good Friday 2019 in front of Philadelphia Sports Complex
In a freakish secular rendition of the Catholic practice of covering statues during Lent and Muslim practices of covering women in general, the Philadelphia Flyers have covered their statue of 1930's singer Kate Smith whose rendition of God Bless America was heard at Philadelphia hockey games (since 9/11/2001) as well as in the seventh inning stretch of New York Yankee baseball. Someone discovered (and reported to the New York Daily News) that Mrs. Smith (1907-1986) had once sung That's Why the Darkies Were Born. Funny - it was one of my favorite spirituals from previous days on the left. The black Communist Paul Robeson also saw the song as more a tribute to the working people than an ode to racism. Here is Robeson's rendition. A revealing obituary of Mrs. Smith.
          
The Beautiful Ballad:

Brothers/Sisters
When the world began, there was work to be done and it seems that someone… left it to the colored man. 
Brothers/ sisters What must be must be.  
Though the balance is wrong, your faith must be strong…. accept your destiny. 
Brothers! Listen to me.
Someone had to pick the cotton
Someone had to pick the corn
Someone had to slave and be able to sing
That's why darkies were born;
Someone had to laugh at trouble
Though he was tired and worn
Had to be contented with any old thing
That's why darkies were born;
Sing, sing, sing when you're weary and
Sing when you're blue
Sing, sing, that's what you taught
All the white folks to do;
Someone had to fight the Devil
Shout about Gabriel's Horn
Someone had to stoke the train
That would bring God's children to green pastures
That's why darkies were born

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday April 13

                                                   by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

APURON UPDATE: Watching Apuron of GuamThe mystery of Apuron continues - final judgment made.

POPE BENEDICT'S RESPONSE TO PAPAL SYNOD ON ABUSE: An egregious event - the collapse of all normative standards in sexuality - a mental breakdown from 1960-1980. Homosexual cliques in seminaries corrupted the character and authority of priests. A theology unmoored from the Real Presence lost the bond with God needed for authority in teaching morality. A people and era living without God - the ultimate cause of the crisis. The Sacramental Church is still where the real presence of Christ is found. Do not heed the Devil and try a new Church apart from the one where Christ still abides. A Thank You to Pope Francis - Benedict essay in response to Synod .

FAITH OF MY FATHERA Catholic son remembers his Catholic Father  -Christopher Scalia on Anthony Scalia.


II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

STEVE BANNONSteve Bannon talk - the Trump campaign was built on: a) Limit immigration; b) Bring manufacturing jobs from China back to America; c) Pull out of wars in Afghanistan and Syria. Other takeaways: We don't have allies. We are financing protectorates. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are the leading intellectuals of dismantling the administrative state - maybe not so much cultural conservatives. America has been deindustrialized. Fixing immigration and restoring manufacturing jobs helps American black and Hispanic underclass. Civic Nationalism is about citizens not color groups. Best present American sociologist is Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance. Our great geopolitical war is with China, Iran, and Turkey controlling the Eurasian land mass. China is our biggest enemy. The election of President Trump was Divine Providence. This is the Fourth Turning (First three: Revolution, Civil War, Depression/WWII). Bannon also made it on Raymond Arroyo show. He understands economic nationalism much better than he understands the Catholic religion. The Institute he is starting in Europe is about "the West" and "Judaeo-Christian values". Not quite a rebinding of men to  Christianity and the living God in whose names the European nations were founded.  Bannon is also part of a group who sees China as an "existential threat " to America and thus joins neocons everywhere in bashing the ongoing Catholic-China dialogue so central to the Pope Francis initiative in bringing the Gospel to Asia. Bannon has a historical timeline and world map in his head--he is always worth listening to and often deserving of refutation.    

THE SPYING ON THE PRESIDENT, OUR SECURITY OFFICIALS AND THE BRITS - TOGETHER AGAINST TRUMPThe FBI and London.


III. THE NATIONS

ON RUSSIA: French born Russian American journalist Vladimir Pozny on the deteriorating nature of relations with Russia. Two first points. There is an unhealthy lack of fear of nuclear war. Boris Yeltsin was in favor of dissolving the Soviet Union so he would be the primary leader because he was President of Russia. Pozny sees US policy after the Cold War as being punitive and based on the "Wolfowitz Doctrine." That policy was to never allow a country to become a serious foe or threat to the US. He documents the promise of Secretary of State Baker to President Gorbachev that NATO would not expand east. He also reminds us of George Kennan opposition to expansion of NATO. To Mr. Pozny, this fatal decision made in the second term of Bill Clinton was the beginning of the new Cold War.  He says from 1990 to 2007 there was no Russian aggression. On the US side there was a) expansion of NATO; b) the bombing of Yugoslavia March 24, 1999 to June 1999 and c) the "liberation" of Kosovo from Serbia (NATO led war 1999 and Declaration of Independence 2008). The first political act of Putin was to apply for membership in NATO and then the European Union. A terrific historical talk about Russia and her mission.

POLAND, RUSSIA, AND A CRASH OVER KATYN FOREST: One of the great tragedies in Christian international politics is the abiding division between Poland and Russia preventing reconciliation to establish a new Christian order after the bloody 20th century. Part of the abiding animosity of Poles for the Soviet Union was the slaughter of Polish leaders in the Katyn Forest in 1940. A Polish president and many leaders of his government died in a plane crash over Russian airspace as they went to commemorate the event in 2010. Ever since a conspiracy accusation against the Russians has kept the leadership of both countries away from what should be a natural regathering of European nations under God against the soulless formulations of the atheist West. There is a real theocentric Europe of nations including Poland and Russia. May the real crime of the Soviet anti-nationalists at Katyn not be eclipsed by another Russian conspiracy hoax.

IRAN HAS FLOODINGHelp them out or throw an anchor? Pope Francis responds.  Meanwhile the US seems to be  Declaring war on Iran ..and nobody blinked. Isn't this a more important issue to debate than President Trump's taxes?

BRAZIL: ...is the most interesting country politically in South America. The new minister of foreign affairs, Ernesto Araujo is a foe of post-modernism and globalism. He argues it is not Enlightenment values but stronger commitments to religion and nation that will lift Brazil. The most famous intellectual who has supported and helped define the Bolsonaro Presidency is Olavo de Carvahlo who lives in the US. (His webpage - looking for English). Politics is not about values. It is people and power. Don't say we should hate the sin not the sinner. The hate doesn't matter but definitely PUNISH THE SINNER (English subtitles). There is a hierarchy of goods and the first good in Christianity is to love God.

CHINA AND HER ETHNICSThe Russian who is Chinese - Race in China.

LEE KUAN YEW INTERVIEWED BY CHARLIE ROSEWe miss the great thinker and the serious interviewer. Here are some important takeaways but the whole interview is excellent.  America is more embracing of other races than Europe. The US-China relationship is the most important relationship in the 21st century. George H.W. Bush was very important in opening China in the US. The next generation of Chinese will speak English as their second language - not Russian. They will think differently and seek a role in the world, not unipolarity. There are 76 million people in Communist Party. There are different rules for them. The Communist Party incorporates any talented non party members who rise in different fields. The biggest surprises in his(Yew) years of public leadership: Two - 1) the fall of the Soviet Union and 2) the adaptation of the Chinese to free markets. The Chinese do not want to be honorary members of the West. They are a distinctive culture  5000 years old and know it. Henry Kissinger remembers Lee Kuan Yew. The two most important foreign policy thinkers of the last 50 years. They both speak English very well but one is an Asian nationalist and the other is a German-Jewish American who understand the world of nations. Both men are internationalists which is very different than globalists. They see nations as the primary civilizational actors shaping  history.  

ISRAEL, NETANYAHU, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF VICTORY: It is absolutely correct for Israel to reject the notion of Palestine as a nation inside their nation. There is no life inside of Israel for a two state solution - now someone has to tell Europe and America. There is no substitute for victory in this debate - there is a nation of Israel with a right to exist and there is no imagined nation of Palestine. Isn't it peculiar that the only nation the globalists are really in love with is one that doesn't exist? Jordan is the Arab nation that rose from the Palestine Mandate of the British. The recognition of Jerusalem as a capital and the Golan Heights as an honestly won defensible border is part of Israeli sovereignty which nationalists must assert. The great clarity of the speech and sensibilities of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's Prime Minister is in his definition of Israel as a territorial nation. He is a great teacher with maps and his book on Israel's place among the nations is a stunning intellectual work of geographic and historical clarity.

The danger of Netanyahu to the United States is his disregard for the national integrity of neighboring nations. The idea that Israel can determine the foreign policy and alliances of Syria, Iran, and Lebanon is not a nationalist principle but its opposite. US support for the territorial integrity of Israel cannot be extended to support their alliance with Saudi Arabia in opposing the legitimate Shiite states (Iraq and Iran) and Shiite citizens (Hezbollah in Lebanon) throughout the region. Netanyahu's greatest fault reinforces Trump's greatest blindspot just as their refreshing masculine nationalisms buttress each other. Netanyahu tied his opponent in the Israeli election for number of seats in the Knesset but Netanyahu has small nationalist parties to ally with so he will form a new government. He is a historic figure with only David Ben-Gurion serving more terms as head of the government. A major strength which he emphasized was his ability to maintain good relations with both the US and Russia. Israel is our ally but Bibi is not our Secretary of State and their foreign policy goals are not our goals.

SAUDI ARABIAThe King (not the Crown Prince) is traveling to anoint Hiftar in Libya and assure Arabs that Jerusalem as a capital and the Golan Heights as a secured border is not Israel's. He is not getting rid of his son, just giving him room to breathe while the old King lays down important markers. The Israel alliance with Saudi Arabia is a short term gain against Iran but a disaster long term. God always warned Israel to trust Him not the foreign prince. Israel has elected their King David - now they need a prophet Nathan to restore the nation to the Living God and peace with their neighbors. The Saudi monarchy is like the Shah of Iran in 1978---not a good horse to hitch one's wagon. The religious movement that is slowly taking  control in Libya, disrupted Iraq for years with anti Shiite violence after the fall of Saddam Hussein, fomented Book Haram and Al-Shabaab in Africa, initiated the founding of al Qaeda and ISIS and inspired the 911 attack on America are the Salafist Sunni clerics of the tiny Hanbali legal school. They are based in Mecca and Medina protected by the century old Saudi-Wahabbi  coalition which is being bolstered(not reformed) by King Salman and his reckless Crown Prince son.

LIBYA: Since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi by a Hillary Clinton inspired NATO bombing campaign, Libya has been in a civil war. President Obama calls Libya his greatest regret. Mrs. Clinton looks on the NATO bombing of a North African nation the same way her husband sees the NATO bombing of an Orthodox country (Serbia). These were necessary military acts showing the seriousness of the Clintons in charge. Mrs Clinton's role in Libya was  only overshadowed by the French President at the time.
The Libyan population is in the coastal north with older ethnic loyalties deeply embedded along an east/west divide (Tripoli in the west and Cyrene in the East) in the country of 6.5 million. Almost 2 million of the population may be foreign born but while in and out migration is extremely important, it is not reliably measured. 80% of the population lives in the big coastal cities along the Mediterranean. Northern African countries are called the Maghreb (West of Egypt) Arabs sharing the Sunni Islamic traditions. Their ethnic origins are as much Berber as Arabic. The most coherent governing movement in post Gaddafi Libya is backed by the Sunnis countries with overwhelming institutional weight. They are sometimes called the Madkhalis after a Saudi cleric. They are "quietist Salafists" that are anything but quiet. Unlike ISIS or al Qaeda, these Salafists are anti-revolutionary and urge Muslims to generally obey existing governmental authorities. (This mirrors the Saudi culture of very strict Wahhabi clerics who leave police and military to the  ruling royal clans--a sultan and mosque division of authority) In Libya, who shall rule militarily is a contested role. The eastern militias (where Benghazi and Cyrene are major cities) led by Khalifa Hiftar backed by Saudis, Egyptians, and UAE are informed by the new quietist brand of Salafism and recently attacked the Tripoli coalitions in the western portion of the country. US personnel are once again caught in a crossfire in a battle our religiously illiterate experts cannot explain.

CHINAA clear and present danger? Is this really how we want to treat humanity's oldest civilization?


IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

MODESTYA reason for the practice. and Purity by von Hildebrand.

MAYOR PETER BUTTGIEG (pronounced butt-guy-gee) AND THE RELIGIOUS LEFT: Let us hope the mayor from South Bend rises as a contender in the Democratic Party. It will help the public conversation. The conversation we need is about religion, sex, and politics but it must be a real conversation. It must be grounded in the reality of God, anatomy and biology. If there is any gift President Trump brought to public discourse it was to encourage men to stop being afraid to tell the truth. There is no area in which the truth is so seldom told as the intersection of mainline American religion and the sexual revolution. This has led to giddiness over a homosexual white guy running as "the normal candidate" and disdain for Patriarchal Christianity and American nationalism as hate groups. The traditional public forms of interracial community and order needed to protect and provide for women children, orphans, and the poor have been demonized for their all male character.  Meanwhile a private form of male union which once "dare not speak its name" is lauded as a source of respectability. Homosexuality is considered some weird new baptismal font that washes a  white man clean to don the leadership of the Democratic Party.  Did anyone run this by Andrew Jackson or John Kennedy.  Mayor Pete is not really a member of the religious left (like Pope Francis can be accused of). Mayor Buttgieg is part of the sexual left that is humanist, not theocentric, homosexual not nationalist in male character and feminist, not virginal or maternal in female character. This article about the "religious left" is missing the much larger phenomenon of why there is no real American religious left anymore. The sexual revolution took over mainline Christianity and Judaism long ago. In fact it is the homosexual priests, the atheist rabbis, and the feminist Protestant ministers who gave us the sexual revolution. It wasn't the miners, electricians, and hard hats who came up with Barney Frank and Hillary Clinton replacing Mayor Daley and Robert Kennedy.  The sexual revolution rose from the churches and the atheist Jewish left. Their cover was the real civil rights movement for interracial justice.  The loss of God as the ordering personal reality of American public life is what gave us the sexual confusion of the sexual revolution. To restore our nation we must talk about the sexual order that reflects the sacral order. The clear speaking mayor from South Bend may help us have the conversation we need if Christian men are willing to speak clearly back to him. We will have to discuss reproductive tracts and the digestive system. We will have to bring up that national category error that confuses the heroism at a bridge in Selma with the debauchery at an Inn called Stonehall. Welcome Mayor Pete, can we talk?

CANDACE OWENS RIVETING TESTIMONY TO CONGRESS: Her grandpa knows real white nationalism. And she knew ANTIFA.

GREAT TEACHERS: Teachers like - the great composer-songwriter Stephen Sondheim.

TRYING TO KEEP THE WORLD OF MATTER ONLY -  HAWKING, BLACK HOLES, AND THE MULTIVERSEA nice reflection on some of the recent philosophical gyrations of physicists.

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday, April 6

by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence



Father and Sons and the Final Four: A Metaphor of Sports and Nation

His father and his father's brothers had gone to UVA. Throughout the 2019 season from three different states, he and his elder brother and his dad watched Virginia basketball "together"  and formed their own electronic troika of commentators. When Virginia passed through the Elite Eight in a providential comeback, the sons resolved to fly their dad to the heart of the country. They paid the scalper's price to sit together in a football stadium on the banks of the Mississippi River. They looked down on the Cavaliers who carried the banner of their state into battle.
Young men from Michigan and Texas and Alabama carried their territorial colors into the same arena. The battle was fought within a set of ancient agreed upon rules. A clock was ticking throughout to establish the limits. The young men on the court were representing the men in the stands as well as women and children watching from afar. The young men on the court melded individual excellence in the alchemy of teamwork that transforms a group into so much more than the sum of its parts. Five  loaves and two fishes will feed  five thousand.  On the sidelines, a much older man who had taught and shaped them gave them guidance amidst the rancor of the crowd and the hostile resolve of their competitors.  They were here because they had disciplined themselves in coordinated work for years. This was not a test they crammed for the night before. They were a model for universities in achieving the human excellence, leadership  and fraternity which sustains the city and nation. They played for a state bigger than themselves as males throughout the history of tribes and states and nations have fought for their larger social group. The colors of their team blotted out the color of their skin while accentuating the virtue of their masculine character. Like every great nation, their male brotherhood of shared duty attracts the larger body of men, women and children in a common identity around the male matrix.
The father had introduced his sons to this world  and when they came to Minnesota, they came as Virginians. Loyalty to the larger territory is taught in the school of territorial duty to one's state. Before the great contest, the father and his sons stood in ritual attention and allegiance to a common flag which noted each state there by one of fifty stars. We can forgive them that as Virginians they knew they could claim a stripe as their own as well.
 A nation is a brotherhood under God. To survive through the ages, it needs institutions of transmission. Nations need great Universities to pass on a culture of shared learning, work skills, character habits, duty and historical identity. Let us suggest to our feminized, fragile and fragmented modern Universities that one path to reform may follow the road to the Final Four. The basketball programs in these four schools are far from being a commercial sideshow unworthy of the "serious research" and contrived new disciplines of academia. Here is a modest proposal from college basketball's most  refined ritual performed this year in Minneapolis on the  Mississippi. Abolish the gender studies departments, the human resources and diversity offices and the English departments. Build the University around sports programs, agricultural and engineering programs and a return to the masculine languages of Latin, Hebrew, Greek and traditional English. Encourage the civic acknowledgment of God in public prayer. Advance the manual arts of geospatial imaging and technology. Teach military history and tactics.  Restore the masculine character of  purposeful public speech by teaching Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric.  Allow the representational pronoun, "he" to represent all people as Christ represents us all; as our male athletes represent our states and as our martyred male soldiers  represented all the persons in our nation.
  The father taught his sons. The sons honored their father. They thought they were simply going to  a basketball game in Minneapolis and so they were.  But their act of filial piety was also living out the core relationship of Trinitarian Christianity. And the territorial loyalty of the father and his sons  to the black and white warriors of UVA  were a living expression of the interracial Christian brotherhood that is the heart of American nationalism.







II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA


JOHN BRENNANSome connections with the Russia hoax.

TURNING THE TABLES: The foreign collusion was with British and Australian Security Officials. John Brennan is knee deep. Even though they are English speaking white guys, aren't they still foreign agents? Victor Davis Hanson is naming them. John McCain was more involved than Hillary Clinton. This is about venal US officials and a serious foreign intelligence actor trying to stop a new alliance.

CHRISTOPHER STEELE - THE REAL FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN OUR ELECTIONHe served his country well - the trouble is he's not an American. No country is hurt more by a new great power alliance (Russia, China, US,  Germany) than Britain already playing an out-sized role in international politics.

CONGRESS VOTES NO ON YEMEN16 Republicans join Democrats.

HOWARD SCHULTZ STARBUCKS FOUNDER AT FOX TOWN MEETING: Takeaways from the whole session: The president is not fit for office because of character. The Democratic field is too far left to defeat the president or govern the country.  Medicare for all would disrupt 67% of population with private health insurance. 56% of population has employer-based coverage. He is against third trimester abortion. He thinks border security is a real issue (differing with Democrats) and would find a path to citizenship for 12 million present illegals (differing with right-leaning Republicans). Our biggest enemy is Russia. ("We are virtually at war with them") China is a serious competitor. The President is wrong to remove us from Syria. He was also wrong to leave nuclear deal with Iran but he sees Iran and Russia as significant problems in Mideast. He would be first Jewish president. He went to AIPAC and noticed many Democrats absent but does not consider them anti-Semitic. He is against reparations for slavery. A clear speaker, well traveled and seems normal psychologically. He never had a chance for Democratic nomination though he would be a very strong candidate backed by a party. By far his most troubling comments were about Russia, but at least in this format we know clearly who he sees as competitors and who he sees as an enemy. Is that clear with other candidates? Isn't that important in deciding who will be commander in chief? 



III. THE NATIONS


REFLECT ON NATOwith Pat Buchanan.



IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION


ISLAM - REJECTED BY RIGHT AS A RELIGION; ACCEPTED BY LEFT IF SEXUAL MORALITY LEFT AT THE DOORReligious, liberty, and Islam.

UNIFYING AUTHORITY STRUCTURESA defense against the lone wolf killers. Philip Rieff insights reported by Rod Dreher: "The death of a culture begins when its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling, first of all to the cultural elites themselves." (RIEFF). The greatest challenge facing believing Christians today is to communicate the faith and its teachings in way that remain inwardly compelling to ourselves and our children.

JORDAN PETERSON AND RELIGIONJordan Peterson goes to Liberty University. Oxford has withdrawn its invitation for Peterson to come and learn together. This evangelical University so full of  bible thumpers had no problem welcoming the discussion with a man who calls their savior "a hero".

THE GAY LIGHT SKIN RICH BOY AGAINST THE CITY FATHERSChris Rock on Jessie SmollettChicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson and Mayor Rahm Emanuel are protectors - their press conference after charges are dropped.  The great hoax:Jussie Smollett is no Jackie Robinson--and he never was. 

DISINTEGRATION OF CAMPUS CULTURE IS NOT A LEFT WING COUPIt is middle class human resource departments and global corporate capitalism with a boost from accrediting agencies.